This week’s Plane & Pilot Photo Of The Week is one that you might have seen, from a seconds-long video snippet captured by a tow truck’s dash cam as a plane, out of control, flashes past, scraping a wingtip as it travels toward what we figured was certain tragedy. Right? Wrong. Almost nothing is as it seems.
Here’s the whole story, and for a change, it’s short and mostly happy. The scene takes place in Buttonville, Ontario, Canada, a busy Toronto area airport. For starters, it’s not on an approach to land but on a takeoff gone terribly wrong. The commercial pilot and his instructor were practicing touch-and- goes (which still needed some work, we agree) when all the wrong things started happening way too fast. On the “go” part of one of the maneuvers the plane bounced hard, and then again, and it was just uglier as it progressed, until it went off the end of the runway, crossed this busy road and hit a berm on the right side of the screen.
Cirrus prides itself on the many lives saved by its whole-airplane-recovery parachute system, which it calls CAPS, but in this case, CAPS did not come into play. Instead, the harnesses and crashworthy seats of the SR20 did the trick. Both occupants walked away with no substantial injuries.
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